The Seven Most Common Mistakes People Make When Building a House

Congratulations! Building your new house is an exciting event. You have worked hard for this moment. You have saved and dreamed. Now it is time for that dream to become reality. Why does this time become a nightmare for so many homeowners?

I have been in the design business for quite some time. I have personally seen many mistakes made by homeowners, mistakes that cost thousands of dollars to correct. These are mistakes that could have been avoided with just a little bit of forethought. After a while I noticed that I was seeing the same mistakes being made over and over again. And I realized that if I see these mistakes so frequently in one city, it must be happening all over the country.

My greatest service to you will be telling you what these mistakes are and how you can avoid them. What you do with the information is up to you. Please read this report all the way to the end. Then you will be armed with the information you need to make your dream home a reality.

Number 1

Here is number one. It is number one because it is so important. No matter what your brother in law tells you, do not act as your own general contractor. You have probably heard that all houses are basically the same and all you need to do is hire a plumber and a roofer yourself and you will save 10% or more on the cost of your house. Haven’t you heard that? “Why pay a general contractor? He is going to do the same thing you could do but he is going to make a cut too.”

I can’t begin to tell you all the ways that is wrong. (But let me try.) First, you do not have the relationship with all the subs (subcontractors, such as plumbers, sheetrock and concrete finishers, etc.) that a general contractor would have. You might say “Why do I need to have a relationship? They are never going to work for me again.” And that is exactly my point. They are never going to work for you again. But they make their living from repeat business with general contractors. So if you are on a tight schedule, but so is a contractor that they work with all the time, whose work is going to be put off and whose work is going to get done? Exactly. The sub knows that he will never be working for you again so you are not as important.

Now, this may be a headache, but it’s even worse. What if your electrician has a rush job for his usual general contractor so he doesn’t show up at your job when he is supposed to? That means that your sheetrock installers can’t start when they were supposed to be there. So they have to leave your job and try to squeeze you in later, at their convenience of course. That means that other subs can’t do what they are supposed to do and it goes downhill fast. There isn’t much you can do about it.